Stories Unstuck
by ellabellbee
Summary: In the course of the search for the author – for Regina's happy ending – Emma and Regina come to one very important conclusion: Storybrooke has a mole. (Written near the end of 4a, so not completely canon compliant. Emma, Regina, and Henry search outside of Storybrooke for clues on how their stories keep getting out. Background Swan Queen.)


**Thank you to typey for fixing my grammar and fixing my tenses. Any remaining errors are mine. This is also not my normal style and my first foray into ouat fanfic, so constructive criticism would be appreciated.**

* * *

In the course of the search for the author so they can find Regina's happy ending, Emma and Regina come to one very important conclusion:

Storybrooke has a mole.

Or perhaps it's the entire fairy tale kingdom that has a mole. Had a mole. Has an omnipotent, omnificent being that likes to delve into people's secret lives and tell their stories.

Kind of.

Maybe it's not actually omnipotent or omnificent, because it certainly gets a lot of the details wrong, and maybe it's not so much spreading the tales so much as spinning them. It seems to have a tendency to leave out half the story.

It also has a fondness for songs.

* * *

Regina's quest to find the author of Henry's storybook isn't completed that year; they don't find the person who is so fascinated with the Charmings and seems to ignore most of the other stories, despite the fact that Emma thinks – from a storytelling perspective at _least_ – that the backstories would be the most interesting part.

Doesn't this world currently have an obsession with villains' origins? Isn't there story upon story with alternating view points, of siding with the criminals, of hoping the bad guys win?

Emma remembers going to see Wicked on Broadway with Henry during her year in New York. That memory, at least, is real. (That memory, at most, was only temporarily happy. Then she _remembered_ and Oz and Elphaba and those songs that got stuck in her head because Henry liked to hum them when he watered the plants all got ruined.)

(So many of the memories from New York are now ruined.)

(The memories that Regina gave her – despite never being _hers_ – could never be spoiled.)

* * *

The Snow Queen had been defeated. Elsa and Anna (and Anna's fiancé, and... a reindeer? Emma still can't quite figure that part out) were reunited. The ice fence surrounding their town is gone, though there are still questions on whether people from either the first or second curse can come or go. They haven't had any strangers or tourists, though, so there is _that_... and Emma, Regina, and Henry all seem to still be able to come and go as they please.

But there is food and shelter and a dwarf who still likes to drink too much and get into trouble, even if he _does_ manage to still be one of the people who save the town the most.

If someone had been keeping track.

(Emma found a scorecard once in the loft in Snow's handwriting. At the time, Emma was winning the race, though Emma's pretty sure that Snow is as biased as the mystery mole. Author. Showtune enthusiast. Whatever. At the very least, she's sure that Regina shouldn't _lose_ more points for creating the failsafe than she won for stopping it.)

* * *

Henry has her chin and her smile and apparently, every once in a while, her wanderlust. Because apparently it's not good enough that he's actually living in the middle of every story he's ever read, he wants to experience _more._ More architecture and museums and stage plays and movies that are played on something bigger than Storybrooke's tiny tiny screen that hasn't been updated since it appeared in the eighties, because now there's 3D and can we go, mom, please can we?

And Marian's alive and Robin has a wife and the storybook author is still unknown and there's no current fairytale crisis and Regina's no longer mayor and can mom come too, can she?

And so the three of them drive to Boston and Emma bemoans that they spent their summer surrounded by ice, so how can it be winter already? (It's actually only just after Thanksgiving, but the sentiment remains.) Regina rolls her eyes but she also smiles, and Emma's happy, happy that they're sort of friends and kind of on the same page for once and at the very least, both loving Henry, and have Henry loving both of them.

So they go to the museums and visit the universities and Emma sees more of the city than she ever did when she lived there, and when the barista at the Starbucks says that she has a lovely family, she just nods and thinks that she's done it, even though it's not what she imagined or pictured (or even what the barista thinks), she finally has one.

Things in Boston are wonderful, and sure she sleeps on the couch in their hotel suite but it doesn't matter because this is all for Henry and Regina has been _smiling._ At least, she _had_ been smiling until they see the poster for the newest Disney movie and there are Elsa and Anna staring back at them in animated form, the details exact from the ice powers to every last crystal on that damn blue dress.

Except now instead of Regina smiling she's plotting and researching and they're making plans to go through the town census data _again_, but what does it matter because no, the movie doesn't tell the whole story, but they all got their happy ending anyway? It took two curses and time travel and Little Bo Peep but Elsa and Anna get to be together and happy and in a moment of weakness Regina asks why _her _happy ending is taking so long to arrive.

(They see the movie two more times looking for clues and the only things that happen are that Emma finally kind of understands the reindeer and she has more songs to get stuck in her head.)

* * *

They also see the trailer for Maleficent, which puts Regina in better spirits because that, at least, seems to be a load of crap.

* * *

So maybe Storybrooke's mole isn't completely omnipotent, because when Emma and Regina ask Anna and Elsa about the details of their life, they are at least very very adamant that they did. not. sing.

(Emma's both a little disappointed by that because _damn_ did cartoon!Elsa have a good voice, but also a little ecstatic because ever since the first curse broke she's always been a little afraid of suddenly bursting into song.)

But now they are also questions about time travel, because the movie must have been in development for _years_ but Anna and Elsa have only been in Storybrooke for _months_. So if the mole already knew the story why did the movie come out _this _winter? Or does time just move differently for the mole, because time has always been such a tricky thing anyway?

And time is what Emma and Regina keep coming back to, because Robin Hood was first found in folklore in the 1200s and Marian in the 1500s but Peter Pan appeared in 1902 and Snow White was published in the Grimm books in 1812 but they didn't get the damn dwarves' names right until 1937 and Mulan was a real person and Princess Emma has never been a fairy tale. But Pan and Hook (and Neal, who also doesn't get his own movie) pre-date the rest of them who all lived in the Enchanted Forest together, regardless of when their stories were told on Earth.

* * *

When Maleficent opens in theatres, Emma and Regina take a quick trip to Portland – for research purposes, they say – and it's a good thing too because it turns out that _their_ Maleficent is Storybrooke's next Big Bad, and simply knowing the name Diaval somehow manages to sway the odds in their favour.

(When they go to Portland their hotel has two beds but not two rooms and at night, when whispers hold weight and the hum from the room's heater feels like a security blanket, Regina confesses that she used to miss Maleficent, because she missed having a friend. Emma lets the darkness swallow her giddiness at the use of past-tense before she slides out of her bed and into Regina's, just so Regina will hear her when she whispers fiercely, _you're my friend too._)

(Regina clutches her hand at that, and in the morning, their fingers are still intertwined.)

* * *

They still don't find Storybrooke's mole, and Emma wonders if the mole is even indeed _in_ Storybrooke. A year passes and Cinderella has another movie and poor Ashley (and Emma stumbles over the name, because she can't keep track of whether it's Ashley or Ella and there are just too many preferences to remember but she _tries_ and apparently got it right this once) feels guilt over not finding all of her friends and vows to name her expectant second child Gus.

(It's a girl. She goes with Billy instead, but Emma's not sure that's any better.)

(She and Regina go to Portland to see that movie too, but this time in their one room there's just one bed.)

* * *

Emma wonders if maybe there's just a magic mirror somewhere out in the world that can see into other realms and through time, and so maybe there's never been a mole selling their stories – there never was. Yet, a magic mirror would still show the truth but Rumpelstiltskin has never been in Cinderella and the fictional Snow White still has never had a child.

(Emma feels relief when the theory of a magic mirror is shot down, because she's sure that the story of Princess Emma and the Evil Queen and how they went from enemies to co-parents to allies to friends to lovers would be one that the movie-makers would seek out. And she isn't sure how she'd deal with Regina, or herself, if _that_ story was out in the world.)

(Emma then figures that it probably already would have been a movie if it were Prince Emma. Or Prince... Emmerich? Prince Emmett. Definitely Prince Emmett.)

* * *

They go back to the theory about a time traveller when they visit New York for a holiday and run into Princess Giselle from Andalasia, because that movie came out in 2007, and so how is she only entering their world now?

But they find her her Prince Edward and they are actually much happier than the movie suggested, and they never find the man and his daughter who helped her out when the world didn't make sense.

(Later, Henry is the one to wonder if Regina and Emma are the story's Robert and he took over the part of Morgan. Emma throws a doughnut at his head.)

But they send Giselle and Edward and the chipmunk back through one of the portals they've been able to establish in Storybrooke and defeat the dragon and bring Nathaniel back to stay with the fairies who are running a halfway house for reformed villains and the chronology is just another thing to add to the mystique of the mole.

(Emma is dismayed that Giselle did, in fact, sing.)

* * *

Really, they never actually investigate the mole or the storyteller again after that first year so much as throw around theories every couple of months, and they always go see all the new movies, just in case. But they don't really talk about it, because what's the use? Even if they had a name, it likely wouldn't mean anything to them, and does it really matter at this point?

Emma still thinks about the mole, though, and in the quiet moments before she falls asleep molded to Regina's back and listening to her steady breathing, she wonders if she should be worshipping or cursing the whoever wrote the book.

Because it always comes back to a single question: is someone writing their story for them? Or are they just retelling it with only some of the facts?

* * *

Turns out it's not Prince Emmett.

It's Prince _Reginald. _

Henry stares at the movie screen in a delighted sort of horror as Prince Reginald – who was never an evil stepmother and instead is a twenty year old sorcerer – kills an evil king to free himself from the king's prison. But then, instead of saving the kingdom, the sorcerer makes it worse with his search for his happy ending after he's told the key to his happiness is the fairest of them all.

Regina barely blinks when the fairest of them all is the evil king's fully grown married and pregnant daughter and so Reginald's retaliation is to cast a curse to take away everyone's happiness by sending them to the real world where they all get stuck in time. But wait! Just before the curse takes over the kingdom, the daughter sends her newborn away from the curse because of a prophesy that this newborn would be the one to save them all.

Emma is caught between laughing and crying when the newborn gets adopted by a wonderful family and is perfectly cared for and loved in the real world but always somehow knew that something (magic, her heritage, her destiny) was missing. When she turns 16 she's given a storybook that explains everything and allows her to fulfill her destiny as a princess and saviour.

So of course Princess Emma saves the town and helps the sorcerer find true love and happiness and they are wed and live happily ever after as benevolent rulers.

(They drink a _lot_ of alcohol that holiday season.)

(When Henry comes home from college that Christmas he gives everyone in town a toy from the movie much to his moms' horror. He takes special glee in declaring that they did a pretty good job getting Emma's dimples and Regina's lip scar correct. This is the thing that Emma is the third-most upset about.)

(The thing that Emma is the second-most upset about is that the movie is another damn musical.)

(Henry hums those songs too, until he's blasted out of the room by both his moms simultaneously. They refuse to heal him until he promises to never ever get the songs stuck in their heads ever ever again.)

(The thing that Emma is the first-most upset about is that there is no Prince Henry so she could make him share in her pain.)

* * *

In Henry's final year of college he takes a creative writing course and can't stop raving about his teacher, and Emma and Regina smile about his obvious crush. Ms. Rehzad is smart and wonderful and young and pretty and he could drown in her dark eyes when she listens to him. He calls home and gushes about how she tells him that she loves his imagination, loves hearing about his take on fairy tales and archetypes and characters and folklore and his life.

When Regina and Emma look her up, they find a text profile of someone who doesn't stay in one place for very long, and sounds like she would have to be much older than the woman Henry describes.

When Henry points her out to them at his graduation, they stop in their tracks. She's recognizable, though neither of them can say they've actually met her – just an image from a tavern in the Enchanted Forest, a voice that sounds familiar from one of their trips to New York.

They go to approach, but she's joined by a younger, grubby, scraggly looking girl with dirty blondish-brown hair and a cloak – and they disappear.

That night, they hear a man in a bar telling a story of epic love and loss, and they see Ms. Rehzad taking notes. She and the girl disappear again, this time through a locked door, before they can approach her.

(The next time Elsa and Giselle visit Storybrooke, they each tell of a travelling theatre group that performs these amazing plays that sound an awful lot like the story Emma and Regina heard in the bar. They also seem to be quoting Slaughterhouse-Five, and then rattle off the plots for another bunch of plays that tell the stories of events that happened here, in Earth's history, but are the things of fairytales in other worlds.)

* * *

It's later when Henry tells them that his writing teacher goes by Sherri, and things start falling into place. (Of course _that _place isn't really near the place where things make sense, but they are falling all the same.)

Emma and Regina make a list and have Sherri Rehzad the creative writer; a girl who can go through locked doors (and assumedly, can probably open portals as well); a story that spans dimensions about being unstuck in time; and Henry, who explained in detail to the most famous storyteller in all of time, every aspect of their lives.

They should have known that Henry was the mole all along.

(The storyteller's fondness for musicals makes a lot more sense, now, too.)

* * *

Another movie comes out from their lives and histories, and while Emma and Regina meet up with a fully grown Henry to watch it, the story doesn't come with the same level of scrutiny as the earlier movies.

The trailers, though, preview a sequel to the story of Prince Reginald and Princess Emma, featured around their child – a Princess Henrietta – and Emma cannot contain her excitement or manic laughter. (Henry cannot run away fast enough.)

They don't ever see their unstuck storytellers and portal jumpers again, but the question of omnipotence and omnificence seems to be fairly answered.

Emma asks out loud if the author really matters in the end, because they didn't need to have their happy endings written for them, did they?

Regina answers that they wrote it themselves.


End file.
